Reflection

As this module is now coming to an end, I thought it would be useful to reflect on what I have learnt and how my blog has progressed throughout the past few months. I was immediately drawn to the topic of gender in relation to water issues in Africa as I already had pre-conceived ideas about what I might find. I expected that women would be in a disadvantaged position compared to men, and I expected that women would be excluded from decision-making processes.

However, what I have discovered over the course of this module is that my view of women’s issues in relation to water in Africa was clearly highly generalised. I have indeed explored the unfair burden of water collection for women, the disadvantaged position of female farmers in relation to water issues, and sanitation issues women experience within Africa.

Yet, I have also been forced to rethink on my own rather Eurocentric view and consider that women are not homogenous across space and actually, some women do not want female empowerment or change within their community. Additionally, I have explored how NGOs and academics can make damaging assumptions when discussing and implementing gender mainstreaming initiatives.

Furthermore, I have explored the different sides of the argument when it comes to ideas of female empowerment and have come to the conclusion that whilst female empowerment is important, it cannot be enforced on all communities using a set formula, but that each specific context must be considered on an individual basis. This particular conclusion has been potentially the most surprising revelation of this course, as previously I assumed female empowerment could only be a positive course of action in all contexts.

I have enjoyed writing my blog immensely, not least because it has allowed me to explore this topic in far greater detail and with far greater independence than other forms of assessment. I hope also that anyone who has read my blog has enjoyed my posts and I am extremely grateful for the insightful and helpful comments I have received. Ultimately, this blog has taught me that, as is the case with most topics studied in the field of Geography, there is always a greater complexity to the issue than was first considered. 

Female Empowerment

This week I will be looking at female empowerment in relation to water management and also other water issues in Africa. There are a wide variety of articles discussing this particular topic as it is considered by many to be an important component of improving water services within Africa (as well as many other places across the world). 

An article published in August 2015 on the website ‘allafrica.com' mentioned the importance of dismissing the association of women as collectors of water and actually making women the suppliers and managers of water systems within Africa. This article quotes the Water and Sanitation Minister, Nomvula Mokonyane, who spoke during the Water Consultative Conference in 2015. Not only is this minister a woman, but she also announced her intension to identify two or three dams in South Africa over the next three years which would be specifically built by women.

An article published in October 2016 (The Point Banjul Isato Jawara, 2016) on the same site stated that access to water is still a major issue for rural women in Africa. This article quoted Fatou Samba-Nije who represents the National Women’s Farmers Association. She stated that government project interventions are now supporting women garden groups which is an important and positive achievement.

These articles have all discussed the importance of female empowerment and the positive strives towards it that have already been made. The UNICEF WASH initiative states that there is evidence to show that water and sanitation services are, in general, more effective if women take an active role in the decision-making processes (unicef.org). A World Bank evaluation of 122 water projects even found that the effectiveness of any project was 6 to 7 times higher when women were involved (unicef.org).

Female empowerment and women’s issues in relation to water in Africa are clearly being scrutinised and considered more closely, both by governments, academics and organisations. Not only that, but more and more evidence is being gathered to show the advantages of female empowerment when it comes to successful water management initiatives. 

Despite the issues I have mentioned in previous blog posts regarding female empowerment, the growing recognition of the advantages it can bring to communities can result in positive changes moving forward. By allowing women to take part in decision-making processes, they can bring their own knowledges and experiences to the fore. Furthermore, as they are, in many cases, distinctly disadvantaged when it comes to issues of water, they can contribute improvements that will specifically address these issues. Ultimately, by empowering women to take part in decision-making processes, where successful collaborations are made, this will not only lead to positive outcomes for women, but for the wider community as water issues pose a significant challenge and will continue to do so long into the future.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201509010857.html

The Point Banjul Isatou Jawara. (2016, October 27). Women Activists Highlights Constraints in Access to Land and Water in Africa. AllAfrica.com, p. AllAfrica.com, Oct 27, 2016.

https://www.unicef.org/esaro/7310_Gender_and_WASH.html

An Environmental Justice Issue

Having drifted a little from the focus of women in Africa in relation to water, this week I have looked at an article by Nghana Lewis entitled ‘An Issue of Environmental Justice: Understanding the Relationship among HIV/AIDs Infection in Women, Water Distribution, and Global Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa’. Whilst this article is a little dated (published in 2009) it focuses on linking two challenges that sub-Saharan African women face: HIV/AIDS and water.

Lewis remarks that when analysed together within this specific context, HIV/AIDS and the water crisis actually represent an environmental justice issue, particularly as among those living with HIV/AIDS across the globe, 70% are women of African descent (Lewis, 2009: 40). He argues that insufficient governmental management of water distribution has increased the vulnerability of women to health issues including HIV/AIDS. Additionally, he links this back to policies put in place by European powers during the period of decolonisation in Africa, which he suggests have resulted in clean water being unevenly distributed within Sub-Saharan Africa with rural women bearing the greatest burden of this.

This article is extremely interesting, and one I would encourage readers of this blog to explore as Lewis is one of few academic writers who has specifically linked HIV/AIDS and the water crisis and framed this from the perspective of gender. I have already explored, within a previous blog post, sanitation issues for women in relation to water in Africa, but to reconsider this by looking at the specific issue of HIV/AIDS has been particularly enlightening as this really demonstrates just how important it is to view water issues from the perspective of gender (though  it worth remembering that this is certainly not exclusive to Africa).

This led me to a more recent article by Krumdieck et al. (2016) entitled ‘Household water insecurity is associated with a range of negative consequences among pregnant Kenyan women of mixed HIV status’. This article suggests that water insecurity has a serious role in the health outcomes of women, particularly pregnant women, with HIV in Africa, though it is not entirely clear what this role is. They assessed the water insecurity experiences of 323 pregnant women in Kenya with mixed HIV status. Shockingly, 77.7% had had at least on experience of water insecurity in the past month.

Again, this article clearly links issues of water with HIV/AIDS issues for women. Both articles call for a serious need to address these issues via stronger government policies. A key issue is that of unequal distribution between rural and urban communities as well as between the poor and wealthy. By creating the better distribution of clean and safe water among all citizens of Africa, these articles suggest that health issues such as HIV/AIDS will be at least partly addressed and this will positively benefit women in particular by extension. However, that is not to say that distributing safe and clean water throughout Africa is by any means a simple task, but articles like this are clearly trying to encourage decision-makers to at least begin to address this problem.

References

Krumdieck, N.R., Collins, S.M., Wekesa, P., Mbullo, P., Boateng, G.O., Onono, M. and Young, S.L., 2016. Household water insecurity is associated with a range of negative consequences among pregnant Kenyan women of mixed HIV status. Journal of Water and Health, 14(6), pp.1028-1031.

Lewis, N. (2009). An Issue of Environmental Justice: Understanding the Relationship among HIV/AIDS Infection in Women, Water Distribution, and Global Investment in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Black Women, Gender & Families, 3(1), 39-64.

A Stronger Response to the Resistance of Female Empowerment

My blog post entitled ‘The Damaging Assumptions of Gender Mainstreaming’ posted on the 27th of November, received two really interesting comments. Baljeet Lakhan in particular referred me to an article called “‘African Culture’ is the biggest threat to the women’s rights movement” by Patience Akumu. This article encouraged me to re-think my initial ideas about the sensitivity NGOs, international organisations and national governments should have when attempting to implement female empowerment initiatives in particular regions of Africa. These initiatives can include encouraging women to give their opinions on the provision and management of basic services including water.

Whilst I have stated that time is needed to allow those that resist female empowerment (both men and women) to adjust their feelings regarding this issue, and I have acknowledged that female empowerment cannot be forced onto a community in the hope it will serve as a solution to problems regarding things like water management, this article (http://africanarguments.org/2015/03/09/african-culture-is-the-biggest-threat-to-the-womens-rights-movement-by-patience-akumu/) has made me reconsider how sensitive these actors should actually be. Perhaps it is too weak an approach to suggest that we must be sensitive to those who feel uncomfortable with the concept of female empowerment as still so much needs to be done to give women equal rights in Africa.

Akumu makes the points that women who try to take their place in the public sphere in Africa, quickly meet with ‘that glass ceiling called ‘African culture’’. Furthermore, she suggests that African women can only enjoy their rights within certain limits and the line is drawn when African men start to feel threatened. Female empowerment and gender equality in Africa, and indeed around the world, is critical to make women safer as well as ensure women’s voices are heard. This will result in more stakeholder participation for schemes such as those dealing with the management of water, and whilst this may not result in a perfect system, surely a greater wealth of knowledge and experience can only be a positive contribution.

Ultimately, I still stand by the point I made previously that female empowerment initiatives cannot be enforced on communities in Africa as a solution to issues associated with basic services such as water supply. Furthermore, if female empowerment initiatives are employed as a solution to these challenges, then a situation where empowering women has not resulted in improvements in basic services might be used as an example of how gender equality makes no difference. This could therefore be counter-productive and give communities an excuse to reject these initiatives.

In fact, female empowerment is important even if we do not see immediate improvements as the advantages reach far beyond the provision of basic services and the benefits will extend into the long-term. Similarly, as the article again mentions, there are examples of women in many parts of Africa demonstrating for their rights and challenging those who seek to oppress them. Female empowerment is crucial and ultimately allows the opinions of a major stakeholder to be heard, which is clearly important for water management schemes. Therefore, perhaps we shouldn’t be quite so sensitive to those who do not want female empowerment in their communities.

References

http://africanarguments.org/2015/03/09/african-culture-is-the-biggest-threat-to-the-womens-rights-movement-by-patience-akumu/

A Gap in the Literature

This week, I wanted to explore the innovations of women in Africa with regards to their domestic use of water having read a sentence in the Wendoh (2005) article last week which alluded to this idea. Considering women are more likely to have control over the use of water in the home for the purposes of cleaning, cooking and drinking, it stands to reason that, in a hydrologically variable continent such as Africa, in particular Sub-Saharan Africa, women will have come up with innovative ways of using water effectively within the home.

However, I have found there to be very few articles on this topic. There certainly seems to be a gap in the literature with regards to any innovative techniques women have come up with in order to use domestic water in the most efficient way possible. The collection of water by women can actually give them the opportunity to communicate, creating social cohesion with other women (https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/2ffa1e63-8a8e-47ed-a4aa-cbf249fafab2). Therefore, women could perhaps seize these moments to share ideas about how best to use water in the home environment, particularly as this is arguably the only space in which women have control over water and can use it in the way they see fit as they are often excluded from discussions of more larger scale water management issues.

There seems to be a real focus in both literature and research on women’s exclusion from water management issues as well as how local governance and NGOs can include women in decision-making processes. There does not seem to be any real recognition of how women have themselves come up with innovative uses of water within their domain.

Certainly empowering women to be able to participate in decision-making processes and improving their access to land for agriculture is important, but this does ignore what women are doing now and seems to dismiss the fact that women have been coming up with their own small scale water management ‘schemes’ within their homes. I am not suggesting that women’s current actions are suitable and there shouldn’t be improvement or change, but perhaps the first stages of improvement need to not dismiss the actions of women in Africa at present and actually use these innovations in order to begin empowering women, giving them control over their empowerment rather than defining it for them.

I think it is important to remember that when empowering any stakeholder or community in water management issues, whether solely women or any other marginalised group, solutions cannot just come from above and then be enforced onto that particular community. Communities and stakeholders need to consulted for any ideas they have developed or thought of themselves as communities can come up with small-scale solutions that can be implemented with the help of other actors rather than the actors coming in and dictating how the community should act. 

If any readers of this post do know of studies undertaken which assess current innovations of women in Africa with regards to the domestic use of water, I would be grateful for any comments.

References

https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/2ffa1e63-8a8e-47ed-a4aa-cbf249fafab2

Wendoh, S., & Wallace, T. (2005). Re-thinking gender mainstreaming in African NGOs and communities. Gender & Development, 13(2), 70-79.

The Damaging Assumptions of Gender Mainstreaming

This week, I read an interesting article by Wendoh and Wallace (2006) entitled ‘Re-thinking gender mainstreaming in African NGOs and communities’. It addresses some of the challenges faced when undertaking gender mainstreaming initiatives. The article examined the situation in four African countries (Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda and Gambia) as these are countries with contrasting economic, political, religious and cultural contexts.

Though this article does not directly mention any connection with water or water management schemes, it does demonstrate that whilst female empowerment is considered necessary and important by academics, international organisations and others, there can be resistance when trying to implement gender equality initiatives within local communities. Furthermore, these gender equality initiatives do affect all levels of development and economics, including, of course, issues related to water. Local NGOs actually felt that gender mainstreaming was for the benefit of donors rather than local communities as work to address gender inequality issues is usually donor-promoted through government initiatives. Local NGOs and communities felt these initiatives were imposed upon them and so were either skeptical or had no real understanding of the issues.

Whilst some governments in Africa have increased the representation of women in parliament and are working on gender policies, resistance has been found at implementation level as people give higher priority to other activities. Most donors want around two-thirds of the main beneficiaries to be women but many governments have decided one-third is more appropriate as they fear a great number would exclude men. There is clearly misunderstanding by cultural policy makers as to how gender inequality is perceived on a local level.

During interviews with line ministries in the four countries, resistance was found to be due to concepts of gender being culturally inappropriate as it was considered to be a direct threat to male power as well as not being well adapted to local realities. Additionally, the speed with which gender equality ideas are expected to be adopted is seen as unrealistic. Not only must the concept be understood, but in order for changes to be effective, time must be allowed for people’s views and values to alter

The article also highlighted the need for women to be seen as agents of change in gender initiatives rather than objects of development. Women are told what equality is rather than being able to define it for themselves, which can result in further problems.

Whilst this article is relatively dated, a more recent book by Amutabi (2013) entitled ‘The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Development in Africa’ seems to reinforce these views seven years later. Amutabi discusses that some NGOs’ attempts to empower women have actually done the opposite and some women are actually content with the status quo as it is. Furthermore, their workshops were considered to be of little to no value and NGOs actually fuelled confusion and tension in the communities they became involved with.

Whilst these authors have discussed female empowerment in general in Africa, as opposed to in direct relation to water issues, they have demonstrated that the implementation of gender mainstreaming is not straight forward. Female empowerment is still crucial and has been found to have various widespread benefits, but, as mentioned in a previous post, we cannot assume that this is an outright solution. In fact, there is great complexity across time and space and so each context must be considered carefully and individually in order for any objectives to be successfully achieved. Female empowerment cannot just be forced on all communities in Africa in the hope that this will solve issues such as those related to water. Again, the local community must be consulted and considered when trying to improve or change any current situation.

References

Amutabi, M. (2006). The NGO factor in Africa. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.

Wendoh, S., & Wallace, T. (2005). Re-thinking gender mainstreaming in African NGOs and communities. Gender & Development, 13(2), 70-79.

Sanitation

On the day of writing this post (the 19th of November 2016), it is annual ‘World Toilet Day’, first established in 2013 by the UN General Assembly. The theme of this year’s event was to focus on ‘how sanitation, or the lack of it, can impact on livelihoods’ (http://www.worldtoiletday.info/theme/). 

There has also been a stress placed this year on the need to invest in toilets in workplaces and schools so that women and girls have separate facilities in order to maintain their dignity and manage menstruation or pregnancy safely. This can apparently boost the ‘girl effect’ which involves maximising the involvement of half the population in society.

Sanitation is an important concept in relation to water issues and undoubtedly affects women and girls, particularly in relation to menstruation and shared facilities. For women in various parts of the global South, cultural norms combined with the desire to maintain privacy mean that women feel they can only relieve themselves under cover of darkness. This can put women at risk of scorpion or snake bites and also leaves women vulnerable to attacks or rape due to the predictability of their movements (Jewitt, 2011). Amnesty International has reported that women and girls in Nairobi’s slums are often too scared to leave their houses to use the communal toilet due to risk of attack. Some women actually feel it is safer to defecate in a plastic bag than go out to shared toilets at night due to the risks they may face. 

Furthermore, water.org emphasises the problem of school toilets as some schools have no toilets available or do not provide separate toilets for girls meaning that many girls drop out of school once they reach puberty. This perpetuates gender inequality issues as well as poverty according to WASH Advocates.

WASH Advocates further state that women and girls may be choosing to ignore their needs because of a culmination of the issues stated above and so their likelihood of developing urinary tract infections, chronic constipation or mental stress may be increased. 

A recurring conclusion in much of the academic literature, ‘grey’ literature and websites I have read in regard to all the themes I have previously discussed, is the need for female empowerment as a solution to water issues. Sanitation is no different as women’s participation can increase the effectiveness of water and sanitation management schemes as well as the sustainability of these projects. School attendance can be increased as the need for separate toilet facilities are acknowledged which can, in turn, improve gender equality issues as a whole. Ultimately, women’s voices and concerns must be heard in order for water and sanitation issues, that are currently affecting them so negatively, to be addressed. 

References

Jewitt, S. 2011. Geographies of shit: Spatial and temporal variations in attitudes towards human waste. Progress in Human Geography 35, 608–626.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2010/07/17350/ 

http://water.org/water-crisis/womens-crisis/

http://www.washadvocates.org/learn/wash-and-women-and-girls/

http://www.worldtoiletday.info/theme/